I run at the Others, and they see me coming, but it’s too late for them. The first few of them can’t run as I reach out to touch them one by one, making brief human candles of them. Even the next nearest few are not fast enough. I lunge after them, and they die too.
There are bullets then, flying around me as more of the Others turn their attention to me. There are bullets going the other way too, and I glance back to see Jack firing at those people targeting me. There’s an old man too, one with a rifle of some kind. I wonder briefly if I should burn him too. He isn’t one of us, after all. He isn’t like me or Jack, and it would take so little to destroy him. So very…
No. I force myself to focus. I will not be overwhelmed by this. That’s Lionel, I tell myself. Tell the part of me that seems so very inhuman. I’m trying to get him out. The glowing part of me doesn’t really understand it, but it seems to know what I want. It even stops for long enough for me to be able to grab Lionel without hurting him.
“I’m sure I told you to leave me,” he says.
“We need to go.”
“And how do you propose I do that on this leg?”
In the end, I prop him up, and we limp along towards the fence together. I try not to think about the people behind us with guns, and not only because it’s a frightening thought. There’s a part of me that still wants to rush at them. That wants to burn them all. I have to fight to keep it from the surface.
Jack fires over our heads at the Others behind us, forcing them back. I keep hold of Lionel, more or less pushing him up the hill. I wonder if I would have had the strength to do that a year ago. Almost certainly not.
When we get closer to the top, Jack takes over from me, putting Lionel’s arm around his shoulders to support him. The Others hang back, apparently unwilling to follow us closely, so we quickly make it to the cars intended as our escape. Grayson is in one of them with the engine running. The other cars have already gone.
“Hurry,” he says. “The Caines and the rest of the Faders have gone on ahead, but we need to go, now.”
We squeeze into the car. I barely have my door shut before Grayson hits the gas, driving as fast as he can through the darkness around us. For the first mile or so, he doesn’t even bother with full lights, obviously trying to avoid attention from any of the Others who might come after us. He only relaxes back into normal driving once we’re well clear of the Fortress, taking us back to the farm at what is still a decent pace, but one that isn’t quite so breakneck.
Even with the speed we use in getting back, the rest of the Faders have beaten us there. We head into the farm house to find Faders having wounds bandaged, sitting around eating, and trying to make sense of exactly how the mission went. Sebastian is at one end of the room talking to Jonas. They look up as we come in with Lionel, and Jonas nods an acknowledgement. I guess, with all the Faders we lost, this isn’t the time for anything more effusive.
Jack takes Lionel off to get medical attention. It’s then that Sebastian starts to speak.
“I’d just like to thank everyone,” he says, not loudly, but in the quiet aftermath of the mission, it carries through the room. “I know attacking the Fortress isn’t something we’ve ever tried before, and I know it cost us some good friends. Thank you for taking that much of a risk. I’d like to believe that I’m able to make it worth it, because being a Fader should be about more than just what’s best for a single person. I think everyone here lived up to that kind of higher standard tonight. And thanks to tonight’s mission, we have seen more of something beyond the merely human.”
He gestures towards me then, and the eyes of everyone in the room turn to me. They’re quiet, and it occurs to me that every person here has seen what I can do. They’ve seen me glow with power. They’ve seen me kill. I don’t know if I want that kind of attention. Not for that. Not for something that scares me more and more, because I’m starting to wonder if I really have any kind of control over it.
“Celestra is proof of what we have been fighting for all this time,” Sebastian says. “There is life beyond what we see and know. There are things that we have yet to discover, and they can help us. All our efforts and our losses have not been in vain. We will continue to discover more. We will not let the Others stop us. Good job tonight everyone.”
Sebastian’s words do a lot to lift the subdued atmosphere of the room. I guess that, for the first time, the Faders are really seeing how much their efforts might achieve. Even though it feels to me like the whole mission went badly wrong, it probably still counts as a major coup for them.
It isn’t long before Jack comes back from taking Lionel for treatment, I go up to him and he takes me into his arms.
“What’s going to happen next?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
“Everyone has seen what I’ve done, what I’ve become. They’ve seen what I really am. So what now, Jack?”
Jack nods. I know he understands the fear behind those words. After all, he has been hiding what he is from his friends for a long time. “You’re safe,” Jack promises. “You saw tonight how far the Faders will go over this, and right now, you’re the most valuable find we have.”
“Well, that’s one way to make me feel special. I’m a find now?”
Jack smiles, kissing me. “You know what I mean.”
“So I’m safe?”
“You are here, though don’t be surprised if people look at you a little differently. Just because you’re what everyone here has been looking for all these years, that doesn’t mean you aren’t strange to them. They don’t know you yet.”
“I’m not that strange,” I point out. “You’re like me, and they know you.”
“But they don’t know that. I’m not sure they’d even believe me if I were to tell them.” Jack looks around the room. No one seems to be looking at us. “I’m just Jack to them now, and unless they saw me glowing, that wouldn’t change.”
Which they didn’t. I glowed in public. I disintegrated people. Jack… well, like he said, he was just Jack.
“I don’t even think I should tell them right now,” Jack says.
I don’t get that. Is Jack ashamed of what he is? Is he ashamed of being like me?
“Why not?” I demand.
“Only a few people know, right now,” Jack says. “My father, Jonas, Lionel. Not the other Faders. They would think of all the years I lied to them, and it would cause problems. Then there’s how they would be on assignments. They wouldn’t know whether to protect me or let me do my job. I’d be something to be studied, not the guy who could get them out of trouble.”
“How do you think I feel,” I ask, “with everybody trying to protect me? After all, who rescued Lionel back there?”
Jack smiles at that, kissing me again. “Thank you for that, Celes, but next time, please don’t take that risk. Lionel had already given an order for us to go.”
“Since when do you care about orders?”
“It’s not just that,” Jack says. “In a situation like that, if you go back, other people will go back with you, and that could get them hurt. Sometimes, it’s about weighing up the consequences.”
I shake my head. “What’s the point in weighing up consequences if it means you end up doing something you know isn’t right? I couldn’t just leave Lionel behind, Jack, not with what it would have done to you.”
“And if it had just been the other Faders?” Jack asks. “The ones who died?”
I don’t answer him, because I don’t have an answer. Would I have left them behind? I almost left Lionel, getting as far as the cars before going back. So I can’t say that I definitely would have gone back to try to help them. The part of me I can’t control certainly wasn’t thinking that way. It was thinking about Jack. It was thinking about how he would be hurt if Lionel died.
It was thinking about the opportunity to hurt more of the Others. I don’t want to think about that, but I can’t avoid it. The part of me that is getting more powerful is also getting more dangerous. How close did I come to killing Lionel in those moments before I remembered who he was?
I shake my head. “Can’t we just enjoy the moment, Jack? Your father’s free. Lionel’s safe, and I… well, I have my family back for a little while too. I’m not sure that the rest matters very much.”
SEVENTEEN
“
Y
ou should go see your family.” Jack suggests. “They’re just in the next room.”
I shake my head. It’s not that I don’t want to. I do. I can just picture them there, trying to make sense of everything, drinking coffee brought to them by one of the Faders. But I’m scared. Scared of what it will be like.
“They don’t know me anymore, Jack,” I say. “I’m not sure I can sit there with them, knowing everything about them, when they haven’t even got a clue who I might be.”
Jack shrugs. “It’s your decision, but I know I’d want to see them, Celes.”
I don’t answer that immediately. “What will happen to them now?”
Jack lets that deflection go. Why is he so kind to me? “The Others obviously know about their cover identities here,” he says. “And there’s no reason to suggest that they will stop being a threat. If anything, they’ll be more of a problem now that they’ve seen you in action at their base.”
Jack doesn’t have to spell out the implications of that. “It isn’t safe for them to stay where they are, is it?” I ask.
Jack shakes his head. “We’ll have to move them, change their identities. The Others have made it clear that they’re happy to use your family against you now, so we can’t give them the chance.”
“It will be worse this time, won’t it?” I guess. “This time, the Underground will change their looks, their lives. They’ll be different people. Different enough that the Others can’t find them.”
Jack is silent for a moment, but then nods. “We thought before that not remembering you would be enough to keep them safe. Now, it’s obvious that it’s who they are that matters, not just what they know. This needs to happen, Celes. Though I don’t know how my father plans on that when his memory fading machine went down in the rubble of Location Six.”
It doesn’t seem fair, doing that to them. Not again. “How many times are they going to have to uproot, Jack? Is this going to have to happen every time the Others get close to them?”
Jack spreads his hands. “We’re just trying to keep them safe, Celes. Sometimes that means doing things that aren’t ideal, but it’s better than getting them into the line of fire.”
“Maybe, Jack.” I don’t much feel like agreeing with him, though. “Maybe it’s just better for them to become
them
again, though. At least that way, they would know what they were facing, know why they’re being put in danger. They wouldn’t have to keep running the same way, and they could make their own decisions about what happens.”
“That would put you in a lot of danger,” Jack points out. “That would put
them
in a lot of danger. Changing their identities is the best way to prevent the kind of mistakes that would let people find them. Anyway, do you really think they would ever make the decision to go back to who they were, knowing Richard is right there, waiting to get to you?”
“I don’t know,” I admit, “But it is
their
decision, Jack. It’s their lives, and they should be able to decide whether they want to take the risk or not. We shouldn’t be the ones deciding this kind of thing for them.”
“Then go and ask them,” Jack suggests. “Talk to them.”
“What?” I realize then that I’ve backed myself into a corner. If I’m serious about my family getting their memories back, then I need to talk to them, even though they don’t remember me at the moment.
“You don’t have to do much,” Jack says, reaching out to put a hand on my arm. “Just find out what they might decide if they were given a choice. It will be more convincing if you know the answer before you speak to Sebastian.”
He’s right, of course. Sebastian will be more easily swayed by people who actually want their lives back than by some hypothetical situation. I force myself to head over into the next room, where my family are sitting, talking to one another with the kind of easy familiarity that families have. The kind of familiarity that I miss so much.